Subject: Re: Using Character Sets in Pine

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 19:20:11 -0500

On 9 Jan 1997, Annelise Anderson wrote:

> I've got pine (on FreeBSD) set up to use the iso-latin1-8859
> character set, but I don't know how to send a message that
> uses this particular character set.  I did check the docs....
> 
> Any suggestions?

    There are two aspects of doing this.  1) You must be able to enter
the characters from your keyboard.  2) You must inform Pine so that it
will handle your message properly when you send it out.

    2) is easy: just go into your personal configuration and set the
character-set value to "ISO-8859-1" (note that iso-latin1-8859 probably
does not exist); that way Pine will know that it has to deal with more
than just US-ASCII characters.  In the latest versions of Pine, there
is also an option to try to use 8-bit transmission, so that Pine may
not have to send out Quoted-Printable.

    1) has no single answer.  It all depends on your personal setup
(such as, but not limited to, what editor you are using).

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

---

From: Pau Gorostiza <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 16:22:41 +0000

> not have to send out Quoted-Printable.

I'm using Pine 3.93 on Linux 2.0.0. Do you mean these options in the
setup menu ?
                 ...
            [ ]  disable-keymenu
            [X]  enable-8bit-esmtp-negotiation
            [X]  enable-8bit-nntp-posting
            [ ]  enable-aggregate-command-set
                 ...

Are they OK like this ? I manage to send latin characters to other
individual users, but *not* through a listserver. I've been told I need
to send them in MIME format, can Pine do this ? I didn't find any
specific option...

Thanks,
             Pau
-- 
Pau Gorostiza
[email-masked]
http://tam-tam.sct.ub.es 

Serveis Científico-Tècnics
Universitat de Barcelona
(34-3) 402-1349, 1352

---

From: [email-masked] (Vladimir A. Pertsel)
Date: 15 Jan 1997 08:10:44 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, Pau Gorostiza <[email-masked]> writes:
|> Are they OK like this ? I manage to send latin characters to other
|> individual users, but *not* through a listserver. I've been told I need
|> to send them in MIME format, can Pine do this ? I didn't find any
|> specific option...
|> 

ftp://mail.sagantec.co.il/pub/russian/pine-with-koi8.txt  1Kb
ftp://mail.sagantec.co.il/pub/russian/pine3.95.with-8-th-bit.tar.gz (2M)

-- 
 From the Holy Land, with respect
 /\ /\   Vladimir A. Pertsel            S/W  engineer
((ovo))        E-mail:           \|/   Sagantec Israel
():::() [email-masked] (o o) tel.972-4-8572781
--PVA------------------------ooO-(_)-Ooo------------------ 
  an ancestor of mine by the name of Noah was once the 
 commanding admiral of the combined fleets of my planet.

---

From: Rudolf Kompf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 10:21:16 +0100 (MET)

On Tue, 14 Jan 1997, Pau Gorostiza wrote:

-> >     2) is easy: just go into your personal configuration and set the
-> > character-set value to "ISO-8859-1" (note that iso-latin1-8859 probably
-> > does not exist); that way Pine will know that it has to deal with more
-> > than just US-ASCII characters.  In the latest versions of Pine, there
-> > is also an option to try to use 8-bit transmission, so that Pine may
-> > not have to send out Quoted-Printable.
-> 
-> I'm using Pine 3.93 on Linux 2.0.0. Do you mean these options in the
-> setup menu ?
->                  ...
->             [ ]  disable-keymenu
->             [X]  enable-8bit-esmtp-negotiation
->             [X]  enable-8bit-nntp-posting
->             [ ]  enable-aggregate-command-set
->                  ...
-> 
-> Are they OK like this ? I manage to send latin characters to other
-> individual users, but *not* through a listserver. I've been told I need
-> to send them in MIME format, can Pine do this ? I didn't find any
-> specific option...
-> 
-> Thanks,
->              Pau
-> -- 
-> Pau Gorostiza
-> [email-masked]
-> http://tam-tam.sct.ub.es 
-> 
-> Serveis Científico-Tècnics
-> Universitat de Barcelona
-> (34-3) 402-1349, 1352
-> 
I think that most transmissions are not 8bit-clean, so that
enable-8bit-esmtp-negotiation does'nt work. Then you should use
Mime-encoding (Pine does it for you).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rudolf Kompf                     | E-mail: [email-masked]

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 16:12:54 -0800

> to send them in MIME format, can Pine do this ? I didn't find any

Messages sent by Pine are *always* in a MIME-compliant format.  If the
enable-8bit-esmtp-negotiation feature is turned on, Pine will check to
see if the SMTP server or sendmail program supports the 8BITMIME ESMTP
extension.  If it does, Pine will try to send the message with a
content-transfer-encoding of 8bit, rather than quoted-printable.  If
the server does not support 8BITMIME or the message is not valid 8bit
for some reason (e.g. a line over 1000 characters), Pine will fall
back to quoted-printable or BASE64 even with the option set. 

> Mime-encoding (Pine does it for you).

Even if Pine is able to negotiate 8bit transmission to your server,
that does not mean your message will arrive 8bit encoded.  Part of the
8BITMIME specification is a requirement that any intermediate gateway
that cannot guarantee correct 8bit delivery must downgrade the message
to Quoted-Printable (or BASE64).  

--DLM

-- 
|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, Box 354841
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA     Stardate: [-31]8740.04

---

From: Pau Gorostiza <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 16:39:00 +0100 (MET)

> Mime-encoding (Pine does it for you).

Ok, I checked it and Pine does send in MIME. What I don't manage to do now
is to use the charset=ISO-8859-1 neither the quoted-printable thing, as
your headers show: 

> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE

I have selected it in the setup menu:

   character-set            = iso-8859-1
   editor                   = <No Value Set>
   speller                  = <No Value Set>
   composer-wrap-column     = <No Value Set: using "74">
   ...

but it seems to make no difference: my heades are still US-ASCII:

> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Is it enough to *write* "iso-8859-1" in the field or do I need a charset
file or something in my Linux ? Sorry if that's a naive question...

Thanx,
            Pau

--
Pau Gorostiza
[email-masked]
http://tam-tam.sct.ub.es

---

From: Pau Gorostiza <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 16:57:25 +0100 (MET)

> to Quoted-Printable (or BASE64).  

Does that mean that I must (also) choose carefully my sendmail server in
order to correctly send accents ? Then, how can I know whether a server is
"8-bit" or not ?

(Many thanx to everyone, this may not make much sense in English, but for
me, writing Catalan without accents is a real pain...)
                                                            Pau

--
Pau Gorostiza
[email-masked]
http://tam-tam.sct.ub.es

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 11:50:03 -0800 (PST)

> order to correctly send accents ? Then, how can I know whether a server is

If you turn on verbose mode for sending, you should see something like
the following if your server supports 8BITMIME:

	050 <[email-masked]>... Connecting to mx2.cac.washington.edu. via smtp...
	050 220 mx2.cac.washington.edu ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.4+UW96.12/8.8.4+UW96.12; Fri, 17 Jan 1997 11:44:10 -0800
	050 >>> EHLO shiva1.cac.washington.edu
	050 250-mx2.cac.washington.edu Hello shiva1.cac.washington.edu [140.142.100.201], pleased to meet you
	050 250-EXPN
	050 250-VERB
	050 250-8BITMIME
	050 250-SIZE
	050 250-DSN
	050 250-ONEX
	050 250-ETRN
	050 250-XUSR
	050 250 HELP

But the recipient of the message also needs to be recieving mail via a
server that understands 8BITMIME.  Further, any intermediate servers
the message passes through must also support 8BITMIME for the message
to be delivered in 8bit encoding.  You can tell what servers a message
has passed through by turning on full headers and looking at the
Recieved: headers. 

Good luck!

--DLM

-- 
|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, Box 354841
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA     Stardate: [-31]8744.13

---

From: Pau Gorostiza <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Jan 1997 20:31:51 +0100 (MET)

> 	050 250-mx2.cac.washington.edu Hello shiva1.cac.washington.edu [140.142.100.201], pleased to meet you

Here's what I get when I write from [email-masked] to my friend Oscar:

050 <[email-masked]>... Connecting to fareb1.am.ub.es. via esmtp...
050 220 fareb1.am.ub.es Sendmail AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03 ready at Sat, 18
Jan 1997
 18:52:16 +0100
050 >>> EHLO giga.sct.ub.es
050 500 The command is not known.
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
050 >>> HELO giga.sct.ub.es
050 250 fareb1.am.ub.es Hello giga.sct.ub.es
050 >>> MAIL From:<[email-masked]>
050 250 <[email-masked]>... Sender is valid.
050 >>> RCPT To:<[email-masked]>
050 250 <[email-masked]>... Recipient is valid.
050 >>> DATA
050 354 Enter mail. End with the . character on a line by itself.
050 >>> .
050 250 Ok
050 <[email-masked]>... Sent (Ok)
050 Closing connection to fareb1.am.ub.es.
050 >>> QUIT
050 221 fareb1.am.ub.es: closing the connection.

Seems to me that after failing (is that EHLO a "HELLO in 8-bit" ?), Pine
uses the old protocol. The problem is then in my server, Giga ? I guess I
can change it in the Pine "SMTP server" option...

Or does it mean that I just *can't* send accentuated (8-bit) stuff ??  

Thanks again,
                   Pau

> --DLM
 ________________________________________________________________________
|                                                                        |
|  Pau Gorostiza                               Universitat de Barcelona  |
|  [email-masked]                        Serveis Científico-Tècnics  |
|  http://tam-tam.sct.ub.es                       (34-3) 402-1349, 1352  |
|________________________________________________________________________|